Producing our Food comes with a cost to the environment

[ianben]

Higher prices for our products is the best way to solve this problem while the familly farm still exists.
The people who live there will look after their environment if the have funds to do so.Higher prices are the best way to get the money from everyone to the farmer.
It is easier to say no to the logger with $in your pocket.
Trying to produce more for less is what harms the environment.
Give us an option to this solution before the multi-nationals take over or the environment will really suffer.
We all know what makes those guys tick. $$$$$.

Regards Ian

[pandiana]

Ianben
Yes, higher food prices are the only solution to this problem.
Government programs, subsidies, controls are at best short term solutions and merely muddy the waters, complicating and already complex problem.

The most common argument agains high food prices is that the it might trigger inflation and widen the gap between high and low wage earners. I would think that money diverted from farm programs to increases in minimum wages might eliviate this problem.

On the other hand, how to you ensure that a rise in food prices will not merely be skimmed off by shareholders of the transnationals?...or at any stop down the production chain? How can we get the money to the primary producers? They have no bargaining power except possibly by stopping production altogether.
Any ideas?
Regards

[nakodo]

It has been shown we have in front of us much higher food prices available to us and we do not chose to capture them.

Recent studies have identified 7 % of food shoppers as shopping in the luxury category. These 7 % buy 25 % of the food sold (in dollar values).

What does luxury purchasing mean, it means 7 % of the people do not use the price as their first priority in making a purchase and will often NOT buy the cheapest product for a number of reasons.

They buy for health reasons, for taste, to bring back feelings of their youth (retrofoods), food safety, gourmet taste, image etc.

Most of these so called luxury products are not grown or produced in Canada because we do not want to change our production practices set over the last 50 years. Change is seen as too hard, too complicated, or would mean we would have to cooperate with other producers, or partner with a processor and other forms of change deplored by the "rugged individualists" we are in Agriculture.

Many of our producers say we have a cheap food policy, I have not yet seen a policy paper on this subject. What I see is a market that is telling us our current products are not worth as much as we want them to be. The consumer is seeking something else and will pay for it, offering someone a cheaper carrot when they want a carrot cake is not the way to please these cash rich consumers.

If we want to raise the prices of generic no name commodities across the board this will force the consumer to pay more for things produced in Canada or to shop elsewhere.

Consumers will buy from outside of the country at cheaper prices in a minute unless we close the borders to incoming produce.

With 3 % of the vote concentrated in Agriculture and 100 % of the vote being consumers in a push and shoving match over access to US goods and other countries goods we will lose.

Closing the border to food is not a realistic option, can we instead shift the way we think and seek to satisfy the wants of the luxury shopper seeking a quality product and benefit from the fact they are willing to pay more for those products?

[ianben]

I see where the egg thread is leading now.
An interesting statistic 7% spend 25% of value. I wonder if I could find the corrisponding figure for UK.
Just a point though I am a wheat producer here in UK but pay twice the price for bread made with Canadian wheat because it tastes the way I think it should.
There is no way we can produce the quality in our climate.
This is my worry with this high quality market, you cannot make a silk purse out of a sows ear. The rewards might appear better but the risk is much greater too.
If I could control the weather that would be fine,otherwise I think filling a fixed contract with a value adding partner would prove immpossible some years. Then where would we be?
We get the same advise over here, add value find niche markets but what do you do when the weather blows you out of the water.
The best way to add value in my opinion is to find something that has nothing to do with ag. like cowmans oil business.
The way to higher prices I believe could come from us realising that prices need not be linked to cost of production.
We should learn to fix a price like everyone else based on what the customer will pay.
Is there any difference between the eggs in the supermarket or did someone just fix a better price?
Competing on price does not happen in 2001 everyone sells at the same price.
Why can't farmers join in??

Regards Ian